by BK Munn
The nominees for this year’s Doug Wright Awards were announced yesterday and it’s another killer slate of the best English-language cartooning in the country. The winners will be announced at a ceremony on the evening of May 11 during the Toronto Comic Arts Festival.
Best Book
A Western World (Koyama Press) by Michael DeForge
Young Frances (Adhouse Books) by Hartley Yin
Evie and the Truth About Witches by John Martz (Koyama Press)
Somnambulance (Koyama Press) by Fiona Smyth
Doug Wright Spotlight Award
(a.k.a. The Nipper),
presented to a Canadian cartoonist or team deserving of wider recognition
Ariane Dénommé, 100 Days in Uranium City (Conundrum Press)
Aminder Dhaliwal, Woman World (Drawn & Quarterly)
Al Gofa, Dark Angels of Darkness (Peow Studio)
Victor Martins, Stay and You Don’t Have To be Afraid of Me
Sylvia Nickerson, All We Have Left Is This
Eric Kostiuk Williams, Our Wretched Town Hall (Retrofit Comics)
Pigskin Peters Award
(best experimental, unconventional, or avant-garde comic)
Eggshell 2 (ddogg) by William Dereume
Winter’s Cosmos (Koyama Press) by Michael Comeau
Promising Jupiter by Ron Hotz
310, 310 (Peow Studio) by Mushbuh
Retomber by Xiaoxiao Li
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All the nominees were published in 2018 and were chosen by a committee made up of Ehab Arafeh, Alex Hoffman, Betty Liang, and Sabrina Scott. The actual winners will be chosen by a jury made up of Canadian comics luminaries: Rotem Diamant, Rebecca Roher, Joe Ollmann, and Dalton Sharp.